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The Art of Life Series 



The Super Race 



THE ART OF LIFE SERIES 

Edward Howard Griggs, Editor 

The Super Race 

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM 



BY 
SCOTT NEARING,. Ph.D. 

WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 

i 9 I 2 









Copyright, 1912, by 
B, W. HUEBSCH 



y fKlINT 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 



D 



CCLA-31911B 



TO THE 

MOTHERS AND FATHERS 

OF THE 

SUPER RACE 



FOREWORD 

For ages men have sought to perpetu- 
ate their memories in enduring monuments 
of brass and of stone. Yet, in their efforts 
to build lasting memorials they have neg- 
lected the most endtiring monument of all 
— the Monument of Posterity. These 
farseeing ones have overlooked their 
real opportunity; for in posterity — in the 
achievements of their children's children, 
men may best hope to reflect a lasting 
greatness. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Call of the Super Race . . 13 
II Eugenics — The Science of Race 

Culture 26 

III Social Adjustment — The Science 

of Molding Institutions . . 44 

IV Education — 'The Science of Indi- 

vidual Development .... 55 
V The American Opportunity . . 75 



The Super Race 

CHAPTER I 

THE CALL OF THE SUPER RACE 

As a very small boy, I distinctly remem- 
ber that stories of the discovery of Amer- 
ica and Australia, of the exploration of 
Central Africa and of the invention of the 
locomotive, the steamboat, and the tele- 
graph made a deep impression on my 
childish mind; and I shall never forget go- 
ing one day to my mother and saying : — 

" Oh, dear, I wish I had been born be- 
fore everything was discovered and in- 
vented. Now, there is nothing left for 
me to do." 

Brooding over it, and wondering why it 
should be so, my boyish soul felt deeply 
the tragedy of being born into an unevent- 
ful age. I fully believed that the great 
achievements of the world were in the 
past. Imagine then my joy when, in the 



14 The Super Race 

course of my later studies, it slowly dawned 
upon me that the age in which I lived was, 
after all, an age of unparalleled activity. 
I saw the much vaunted discoveries and 
inventions of by-gone days in their true 
proportions. They no longer preempted 
the whole world — present and future, as 
well as past, but, freed from romance, they 
ranged themselves in the form of a foun- 
dation upon which the structure of civili- 
zation is building. The successive steps 
in human achievement, from the use of 
fire to the harnessing of electricity, consti- 
tuted a process of evolution creating 
" a stage where every man must play 
his part " — a part expanding and broad- 
ening with each succeeding generation; and 
I saw that I had a place among the actors 
in this play of progress. The forward 
steps of the past need not, and would not 
prevent me from achieving in the present 
— nay, they might even make a place, if 
I could but find it, for my feet; they might 
hold up my hands, and place within my 
grasp the keen tools with which I should 
do my work. 

The school boy, passing from an atti- 



The Super Race 15 

tude of contemplation and wonder before 
the things of the past into an attitude of 
active recognition of the necessities of the 
present, passed through the evolutionary 
process of the race. The savage, Sir 
Henry Maine tells us, lives in a state of ab- 
ject fear, bound hand and foot by the say- 
ings and doings of his ancestors and 
blinded by the terrors of nature. The 
lightning flashes, and the untutored mind, 
trembling, bows before the wrath of a jeal- 
ous God; the harvest fails, and the savage 
humbly submits to the vengeance of an 
incensed deity; pestilence destroys the peo- 
ple, and the primitive man sees in this 
catastrophe a punishment inflicted on him 
for his failure to propitiate an exacting 
spirit — in these and a thousand other 
ways uncivilized peoples accept the phe- 
nomena in which nature displays her 
power, as the expressed will of an omnipo- 
tent being. One course alone is open to 
them; they must bow down before the un- 
known, accepting as inevitable those forces 
which they neither can understand nor 
conquer. 

Civilization has meant enlightenment 



1 6 The Super Race 

arid achievement. In lightning, Franklin 
saw a potent giant which he enslaved for 
the service of man; in famine, Burbank 
discovered a lack of proper adjustment be- 
tween the soil and the crops that men were 
cultivating — thereupon he produced a 
wheat that would! thrive on an annual rain- 
fall of twelve inches; in pestilence, Pasteur 
recognized the ravages of an organism 
which he prepared to study and destroy. 
Lightning, famine and pestilence are, to 
the primitive man, the threatening of a 
wrathful god; but to the progressive 
thinker they are merely forces which must 
be utilized or counteracted in the work of 
human achievement. 

As a boy, I believed my opportunities 
to be limited by the achievements of the 
past. As a man, I see in these past 
achievements not hindrances, but the foun- 
dation stones which the past has laid down, 
upon which the present must build, in or- 
der that the future may erect the per- 
fected structure of a higher civilization. 
I see all of this clearly, and I see one 
thing more. In the old days which I had 
erstwhile envied, one event of world im- 



The Super Race 17 

port might have been chronicled for each 
decade, but in the nineteenth andi twentieth 
centuries, such an event may be chronicled 
for each year, or month or even for each 
day. The achievements of the past were 
noteworthy: these of the present are stu- 
pendous. 

The process of social evolution reveals 
itself in these progressive steps. Because 
the past has built, the present is building 
— building in order that the future may 
stand higher in its realization of potential 
life. The past was an age of uncertain, 
hesitating advance. The present, an age 
of dynamic achievement, leads on into the 
future of human development. 

In the twentieth century: 

1. Knowledge provides a basis for 

activity. 

2. The social atmosphere palpitates 

with enthusiastic resolve and 
abounds in noble endeavor. 

3. There is work for each one to 

perform. 

The despondent boy has thus evolved 



l8 The Super Race 

into the enthusiastic worker whose watch- 
word is " Forward! " — forward towards 
a new goal, whose very existence is made 
attainable through the achievements of the 
past: a goal before which the triumphs of 
bygone ages pale into insignificance. 

The past worked with things. Pyra- 
mids were built, cities constructed, moun- 
tains tunneled, trade augmented, fortunes 
amassed. Hear Ruskin's comment on 
this devotion to material wealth: " Never- 
theless, it is open, I repeat, to serious ques- 
tion, .... whether, among na- 
tional manufactures, that of souls of a good 
quality may not at last turn out a quite lu- 
crative one. Nay, in some far-away and 
yet undreamed of hour, I can even imagine 
that England ... as a Christian 
mother, may at last attain to the virtues 
and the treasures of a heathen one, and be 
able to lead forth her sons, saying: 
1 These are my jewels.' " * 

The past worked with things: the fu- 
ture, rising higher in the scale of civiliza- 
tion, must work with men — with the plas- 

1 John Ruskin, Unto this Last — Essay II. 



The Super Race 19 

tic, living clay of humanity. As Solomon 
long ago said, " He that ruleth his own 
spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." 
The men of the past built cities and took 
them. They brought the forces of nature 
into subjection and remodeled the world 
as a living place for humanity, yet, save 
for a shadow in Rome and an echo from 
Greece, there is scarcely a trace in history 
of a consistent attempt to evolve nobler 
irnen. 

Material objects have cost the nations 
untold effort, but human fiber — the life 
blood of nations — has been overlooked 
or forgotten. The world is weary of this 
emphasis on things and this forgetfulness 
of men; the ether trembles with the clamor 
for manhood. The fields, white to har- 
vest, are awaiting the laborers who, build- 
ing on the discoveries and inventions of 
things in the past, will so mold the hu- 
man clay of the present that the future 
may boast a society of men and women 
possessing the qualities of the Super Race. 

What is a Super Race? Nothing more 
nor less than a race representing, in the ag- 
gregate, the qualities of the Super Man — 



20 The Super Race 

the qualities which enable one possessing 
them to live what Herbert Spencer de- 
scribed so luminously as a " complete life/' 
namely, — 

i. Physical normality. 

2. Mental capacity. 

4. Concentration 

3. Aggressiveness 

5. Sympathy. 

6. Vision. 

These characteristics of the Super Man 
express themselves in his activity : 



1. Physical normality provides energy. 

2. Mental capacity gives mental grasp. 

3. Aggressiveness.) , ~ . 

^°° . \ produce efficiency. 

4. Concentration, j r J 

5. Sympathy leads to harmony with 

things and cooperation with men. 

6. Vision shows itself in ideals. 

The energy to do; and the mental grasp 
to appreciate; together with the capacity 
to choose efficiently, furnish the basis for 
achievement. Achievement, however, is 



The Super Race 21 

not in itself a guarantee of worth unless 
its course is shaped by sympathy and di- 
rected toward a goal which is determined 
by the prophetic power of vision. Such 
are the characteristics which, combined in 
one individual, insure completeness of life. 
About them, philosophers have reasoned 
and poets have sung. They are the acme 
of human perfection — the ideal of indi- 
vidual attainment. 

Though they have been thus idealized, 
these qualities are not new. They have 
existed for ages, as they exist to-day, oc- 
casionally combined in one individual but 
usually appearing separately in members 
of the social group. They form part of 
the heritage of the human race, and in 
spite of neglect and lack of fostering, they 
are widespread in all sections of the popu- 
lation. The production of a race of men 
and women, a great majority of whom 
shall possess these qualities, will mean the 
next great step in human achievement. 

The Super Man has lived for ages. 
The Greeks traced the descent of their 
heroes and heroines — their Super Men 
— from the Gods. It was thus that they 



22 The Super Race 

explained exceptional ability. Exceptional 
men live to-day, as they did in ancient 
Greece, directing the thought and work 
of the times. They possess the qualities 
of the Super Man — physical normality, 
mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentra- 
tion, sympathy and vision ; and, above all, 
we now understand that they are not the 
offspring of the gods, but the sons of men 
and women whose combined parental qual- 
ities inevitably produced Super Men. 
The Super Man is not a theory, nor an 
accident, but a natural product of natural 
conditions. 

Though the Super Man may be met 
with occasionally in modern society, and 
though the qualities ascribed to him are 
manifest everywhere among those who 
have had an opportunity for their devel- 
opment; opinions still differ as to the pos- 
sibility of producing a Super Race. An 
even greater difference of opinion is en- 
countered when an attempt is made to for- 
mulate the means which should be adopted 
to secure such an end; yet there can be 
little difference of opinion as to the de- 
sirability, from a national as well as from 



The Super Race 23 

an individual standpoint, of creating a race 
of Super Men. 

The call of the present age for a Super 
Race is thus voiced by Yeats, 2 

" O Silver Trumpets! Be you lifted up, 
And cry to the great race that is to come. 
Long throated swans, amid the Waves of Time, 
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the World 
It waits, and it may hear and come to us." 

We long for the coming of the Super 
Race. We aim toward this goal. Can 
it be compassed in finite time? Is 
Nietzsche right when he says, — " I teach 
you beyond-man." " All beings hitherto 
have created something beyond them- 
selves." U What is great in man is that 
he is a bridge and not a goal." " Not 
whence ye come, be your honor in the fu- 
ture, but whither ye go! " " In your chil- 
dren ye shall make: amends for being your 
father's children. Thus ye shall redeem 
all that is past." 3 

2 William B. Yeats, Poetic Works, Vol. II, p. 407. 
Macmillan Co., N. Y. 

8 Frederick Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 
5-296, Macmillan Co., N. Y. 



24 The Super Race 

Shall we make amends to the future? 
Come, then, let us reason together con- 
cerning the measures which must be 
adopted to raise the standard of succeed- 
ing generations. There are three means 
which lie ready at hand: three sciences 
which lend themselves to our task: three 
tools with which we may shape the Super 
Race. They are: 

i. Eugenics — The science of race 
culture. 

2. Social adjustment — The science 

of molding institutions. 

3. Education — The science of in- 

dividual development. 

The science of Eugenics treats of those 
forces which, through the biologic proc- 
esses of heredity, may be relied upon to 
\ rovide the inherited qualities of the Su- 
per Race. The science of Social Adjust- 
ment treats of those forces which, through 
the modification of social institutions, may 
be relied upon to provide a congenial en- 
vironment for the Super Race. The sci- 
ence of Education aims to assist the child 



The Super Race 1$ 

in unfolding and developing the hereditary 
qualities of the Super Man, provided 
through eugenic guarantees. Hence, Eu- 
genics, Social Adjustment and Education 
are sciences, the mastery of which is a 
pre-requisite to the development of the 
Super Race. 



CHAPTER II 

EUGENICS THE SCIENCE OF RACE CUL- 
TURE. 

The object of Eugenics is the conscious 
improvement of the human race by the ap- 
plication of the laws of heredity to human 
mating. Eugenics is the logical fruition 
of the progress in biologic science made 
during the nineteenth century. 

The laws of heredity, studied in minute 
detail, have been applied with marvelous 
success in the vegetable and animal king- 
doms. " Is there any good reason," de- 
mands the eugenist, " why the formulas 
which have operated to re-combine the 
physical properties of plants and animals, 
should not in like measure operate to 
modify the physical properties of men and 
women? " 

The studies which have been made of 
eye color, length of arm, head shape, and 
other physical traits show that the same 
26 



The Super Race 27 

laws of heredity which apply in the ani- 
mal and vegetable kingdoms apply as well 
in the kingdom of man. Since the species 
of plants and animals with which man has 
experimented have been improved by se- 
lective breeding, there seems to be no good 
reason why the human race should not be 
susceptible of similar improvement. What 
intelligent farmer sows blighted potatoes ? 
Where is the dog fancier who would 
strive to rear a St. Bernard from a mon- 
grel dam ? Neither yesterday nor yet to- 
morrow do men gather grapes of thorns. 
Those who have to do with life in any 
form, aware of this fact, refuse to permit 
propagation except among the best mem- 
bers of a species : hence with each succeed- 
ing generation the ox increases in size and 
strength: the apple in color; the sweet 
pea in perfume; and the horse in speed. 
Is this law of improving species a uni- 
versal law? Alas, no! it rarely if ever 
applies in the selection of men and women 
for parenthood. The human species has 
not, during historic times, improved either 
in physique, in mental capacity, in aggres- 
siveness, in concentration, in sympathy or 



28 The Super Race 

in vision. Nay, there are not wanting 
thoughtful students who affirm that in al- 
most every one of these respects the exact 
contrary holds true. 

There appears to be some question as to 
whether the best of the Greek athletes ex- 
ceeded in strength and skill the modern 
professional athlete, but there is no doubt 
at all that the average citizen of Athens 
was a more perfect specimen physically 
than the average citizen of twentieth cen- 
tury America. 

Some students insist that the level of in- 
tellectual capacity has been raised, yet Gal- 
ton, after a careful survey of the field, 
concludes in his Hereditary Genius that 
the average citizen of Athens was at least 
two degrees higher in the scale of intel- 
lectual attainment than the average Eng- 
lishman; Carl Snyder 1 boldly maintains 
thati the intellectual ability of scientific men 
is less to-day than it was in past centuries; 
while Mrs. Martin, 2 in a study more novel 



1 Carl Snyder, The World Machine. New York, 
Longmans, Green & Co., 1907. 

2 Prestonia MIann Martin, Is Mankind Advancing? 
New York, Baker & Taylor Co., 191 1. 



The Super Race 29 

than scientific, insists that the genius of 
the modern world is on a level distinctly 
below that of the genius of Greece. 

Perhaps American commercial aggres- 
siveness is equal to the military aggressive- 
ness of the Romans, the early Germans, 
and the followers of Attila. We have 
concentrated most of our efforts upon in- 
dustry, yet even here, our concentration 
is no greater than that of the poets of the 
Elizabethan era, or the religious zealots 
of the Middle Ages. Our sympathy with 
beauty is at so low an ebb that we fail 
even to approach the standard of past 
ages. Neither in art, in sculpture, nor 
in poetry do our achievements compare 
with those of the earlier Mediterranean 
civilizations; while our knowledge of men 
as revealed in our literature is not above 
that of the Romans or the Athenians. As 
for vision, we still accept and strive to 
fulfill the commandments of the Prophet 
of Nazareth. In all of these fields, twen- 
tieth century America is equaled, if not 
outdone by the past. 

Thus the distinctive qualities of the Su- 
per Man appear in the past with an intens- 



30 The Super Race 

ity equal if not superior to that of the pres- 
ent. History records the transmutation 
of vegetable and animal species, the revo- 
lution of industry, the modification of so- 
cial institutions, and the transformation of 
governmental systems; but in all historic 
time, it affirms no perceptible improvement 
in the qualities of man. " We must re- 
place the man by the Super Man," writes 
G. Bernard Shaw. 3 " It is frightful for 
the citizen, as the years pass him, to see 
his own contemporaries so exactly repro- 
duced by the younger generation." 

Nevertheless, the possibility of race im- 
provement exists. " What now charac- 
terizes the exceptionally high may be ex- 
pected eventually to characterize all, for 
that which the best human nature is capa- 
ble of is within the! reach of human nature 
at large." 4 After years of intensive 
study, Spencer thus confidently expressed 
himself. Since he ceased to work, each 
bit of scientific data along eugenic lines 
serves to confirm his opinion. Armed 

3 G. Bernard Shaw, Man and Super Man. P. 218- 
219. N. Y., Brentano's. 

4 Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics. Para. 97. 
N. Y., D. Appleton & Co., 1893. 



The Super Race 31 

with such a belief and with the assurance 
which scientific research has afforded, we 
are preparing in this eleventh hour to ful- 
fill Spencer's predictions. 

There are two fields in which eugenics 
may be applied — the first, Negative, the 
second, Positive. Through the establish- 
ment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will 
be restrained from mating and perpetuat- 
ing their unfitness in the future. Through 
Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced 
to mate, and by combining their fitness in 
their offspring, to raise up each new gen- 
eration out of the flower of the old. Neg- 
ative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Posi- 
tive Eugenics perpetuates the fit. 

The field of Negative Eugenics has been 
well explored. No question exists as to 
the transmission through heredity of feeble 
mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain 
forms of criminality. " There is one way, 
only one way, out of this difficulty. Mod- 
ern society . . . must declare that 
there shall be no unfit and defective citi- 
zens in the State." 5 The Greeks elimin- 

5 Saml. Z. Batten, The Redemption of, the Unfit, 
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 14, p. 242 (1909). 



32 The Super Race 

ated unfitness by the destruction of defec- 
tive children; though we may deplore such 
a practice in the light of our modern ethical 
codes, we recognize the end as one essential 
to race progress. By denying the right of 
parenthood to any who have transmissible 
disease or defect, our modern knowledge 
enables us to accomplish the same end 
without recourse to the destruction of hu- 
man life. 

Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the 
science of Eugenics, writes, in his last im- 
portant work, " I think that stern com- 
pulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the 
free propagation of the stock of those who 
are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble- 
mindedness, habitual criminality and pau- 
perism." 6 Yet society, in dealing with 
hereditary defect, presents some of its most 
grotesque inconsistencies. " It is a curi- 
ous comment on the artificiality of our so- 
cial system that no stigma attaches to pre- 
ventable ill-health." An empty purse, or 
a ruined home may mean social ostracism, 
but " break-down in person, whatever the 

6 Francis Galton, Memoirs of My Life, p. 311. N. 
Y., E. P. Dutton, 1909. 



The Super Race 33 

cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and 
silence." 7 

Certain defects are known to be trans- 
missible by heredity from parent to child, 
until the cretin of Balzac's Country Doctor 
is reproduced for centuries. The remedy 
for this form of social self-torture lies in 
the denial of parenthood to those who 
have transmissible defects. Individually, 
such a denial works hardships in this gen- 
eration : socially, and to the future genera- 
tions, it means comparative freedom from 
individual, and hence from social defect. 

The problem of Positive Eugenics pre- 
sents an essentially different aspect. As 
Ruskin so well observes — " It is a mat- 
ter of no final concern, to any parent, 
whether he shall have two children or four; 
but matter of quite final concern whether 
those he has shall or shall not deserve to be 
hanged." The quality is always the sig- 
nificant factor. Whether in family or na- 
tional progress, an effort must be made to 
insure against hanging, or against any 
tendency that leads gallowsward. 

7 Arnold White, Efficiency and Empire, p. 97, Lon- 
don, Methuen & Co., 1901. 



r 



34 The Super Race 

Positive Eugenics is the science of race 
building through wise mating. " As long 
as ability marries ability, a large propor- 
tion of able offspring is a certainty." 8 
What prospective parent does not fondly 
imagine that his children will be at least 
near-great? Yet how many individuals, 
in their choice of a mate, set out with the 
deliberate intention of securing a life part- 
ner whose qualities, when combined with 
his own, must produce greatness? 

The Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood fam- 
ilies boast sixteen men of world fame 
in five generations; in the Bach family 
there were fifty-seven musicians of note in 
eight generations; Wood's study of Hered- 
ity in Royalty shows the evident transmis- 
sion of special ability ; yet men and women 
of ability, anxious for able offspring, mate 
without any rational effort to secure the 
end which they desire. " Ninety-nine times 
out of a hundred our mathematician mar- 
ries a woman whose family did not count a 
single astronomer, physicist or other mathe- 
matical mind among its' members. The re- 

8 W. C. & C. D. Whetham, The Family and the Na- 
tions, p. 85. N. Y., Longmans, 1909. 



The Super Race 35 

suit of such a union is what could be ex- 
pected. Although genius does not gener- 
ally die out right away in the first genera- 
tion, it decreases by half, and further dilu- 
tions soon bring it down to nothingness." 9 

This, in brief, is the problem of Nega- 
tive and of Positive Eugenics. Both de- 
fect and ability are transmitted by hered- 
ity; both are the product of the mating 
process known as marriage; since society 
can and does control marriage, it may, 
through this control, exercise a real in- 
fluence upon the character of future gen- 
erations. 

The science of Eugenics is in its in- 
fancy, yet, widely established and vigor- 
ously applied, it may revolutionize the hu- 
man species. The Super Race may come, 
because " looked at from the social stand- 
point, we see how exceptional families, by 
.careful marriages, can within even a few 
generations, obtain an exceptional stock, 
and how directly this suggests assortative 
mating as a moral duty for the highly en- 
dowed. On the other hand, the excep- 

9 Gustave Michaud, Shall We Improve Our Race, 
The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 72, p. 77 (1908). 



36 The Super Race 

tionally degenerate isolated in the slums 
of our modern cities can easily produce 
permanent stock also: a stock which no 
change of environment will permanently 
elevate, and which nothing but mixture 
with better blood will improve. But this 
is an improvement of the bad by a social 
waste of the better. We do not want to 
eliminate bad stock by watering it with 
good, but by placing it under conditions 
where it is relatively or absolutely infer- 
tile." 10 

" But what of love?" wails the senti- 
mentalist; " in your scheme Eugenics out- 
weighs Cupid! " Perhaps, but what of 
it? Cupid has proved in the past a sad 
bungler, whose mistakes and failures 
grimace from every page of our divorce 
court records. Far from hindering his ac- 
tivities, however, Eugenics will assist Cu- 
pid by bringing together persons truly con- 
genial — hence capable of an enduring 
love. Too many men have married a 
natty Easter bonnet, or a cleverly tailored 
suit. Too many women have fallen a prey 

10 J. A. Thompson, Heredity, p. 331. N. Y., G. P. 
Putnam's Sons, 1908, 



The Super Race 37 

to a tempting bank account or a pair of 
glorious mustachios. Blind Cupid limps 
but lamely over the rugged path of matri- 
monial bliss. The questionable success of 
his best efforts proves his sure need of a 
guide. 

Eugenics represents an effort to bring 
together those people who have comple- 
mentary qualities and complementary in- 
terests; who are capable of maintaining 
congenial relationships in the present; and 
creating able offspring in the future. Se- 
lection and parenthood are the cradle of 
the future. Hence the individual who, in 
the exercise of his choice, overlooks their 
significance overlooks one of his most im- 
portant racial responsibilities. 

Society is interested in Eugenics, be- 
cause it is through Eugenics that the hered- 
itary traits of the, Super Race are perpetu- 
ated and perfected. Eugenics, rightly un- 
derstood and applied, is a social asset of 
unexcelled value. How long, then, shall 
our society continue to feed on the husks, 
neglecting the grain which lies everywhere 
ready at hand? 

Eugenics is indeed one means of race 



38 The Super Race 

salvation, yet what care do we take to per- 
fect eugenic measures? "If through 
sheer chance, some great mathematician is 
evolved one day out of the crowd, the 
state ■ — who should be ever on the watch 
for such events and whose main care should 
be to preserve and increase such sources 
of light, progress and national glory — ■ 
does nothing to protect the man of genius 
against care, disease or anything likely to 
shorten life nor to multiply the splendid 
thinking machine." n A great state 
must have for its component parts great 
men and women. Did we truly seek 
greatness, how many measures for its at- 
tainment lie neglected at our very doors ! 

Every well regulated state of antiquity 
eliminated defectives in the interest of the 
group, and of the future. What more 
effective means of social preservation 
(could be imagined than some measure 
through whose operation the defective 
classes in society would be eliminated, and 
the social structure, bulwarked by stalwart 
manhood and womanhood, made proof 

11 Gustave Michaud, Shall We Improve Our Race? 
Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 72, p. 77 (1908). 



The Super Race 39 

against the ravages of time. How serious 
a thing is the propagation of defect! 
Murder is a crime, punishable by death, 
yet a murderer merely eliminates one unit 
from the social group. The destruction 
of this one life may cause sorrow; it may 
deprive society of a valued member; but 
it) is, after all, a comparatively insignificant 
offense. The perpetuation of hereditary 
defect is infinitely worse than murder. 
Consider, for example, a marriage, sanc- 
tioned by church and state, between two 
persons both having in their blood hered- 
itary feeble-mindedness. 

Investigations of thousands of feeble- 
minded families show that, in such a case, 
every one of the offspring may be and 
probably will be feeble-minded — a curse 
to himself and a burden to society. Pau- 
perism, crime, social dependence, vice, all 
follow in the train of mental defect, and 
the mentally defective parents hand on for 
untold generations their taint — some- 
times in more, sometimes in less virulent 
form, but always bringing into the world 
beings not only incapable of caring for 
themselves, but fatally capable of handing 



40 



The Super Race 



on their defect to the future. The mur- 
derer robs society; the mentally defective 
parent curses society, both in the present 
and in the future, with the taint of degen- 
eracy. The murderer takes away a life; 
but the feeble-minded parent passes on to 
the future the seeds of racial decay. 

The first step in Eugenics progress — 
the elimination of defect] by preventing the 
procreation of defectives — is easily stated, 
and may be almost as easily attained. 
The price of six battleships ($50,000,000) 
would probably provide homes for all of 
the seriously defective men, women and 
^children now at large in the United States. 
Thus could the scum of society be removed, 
and a source of social contamination be 
effectively regulated. Yet with tens of 
thousands of defectives, freely propagat- 
ing their kind, we continue to build battle- 
ships, fondly believing that rifled cannon 
and steel armor plate will prove sufficient 
for national defense. 

This is but a part, and by far the least 
important part, of the eugenic programme. 
The elimination of defect prevents degen- 
eracy, but does not insurei the physical nor- 



The Super Race 41 

mality, mental capacity, aggressiveness, 
concentration, sympathy and vision of the 
Super Man. While the elimination of de- 
fect is imperative, it is after all only the 
first step toward the creation of positive 
qualities. 

Positive Eugenics may be as obvious as 
Negative Eugenics, but the promulgation 
of its doctrines is not equally easy. A 
series of legislative enactments will pre- 
vent the mating of the hereditarily defec- 
tive; nothing but the most painstaking edu- 
cation can be relied upon to secure the 
mating of those eugenically fit. Never- 
theless for that modern state which seeks 
to persist and dominate, no lesser measure 
will suffice. After all, why should not so- 
ciety educate its youth to a sense of wis- 
dom in mating? The United States 
spends each year some four hundred mil- 
lions of dollars in public education, teach- 
ing children to read, to spell, to sew, to 
draw. The importance of these studies is 
obvious, yet, from a social standpoint, they 
cannot compare in significance with such 
training in the laws of heredity and biol- 
ogy as will insure wise choice in mating. 



42 The Super Race 

The state, in its efforts at self preservation, 
cannot lay too much emphasis on the train- 
ing for eugenic choice. 

Biology, through the laws of heredity, 
C . „ applied in the science of Eugenics, holds 
out every hope for the coming of the Su- 
per Man and of the Super Race. Not in 
our knowledge of its laws, but in the prac- 
tice of its precepts, are we lacking. 

Eugenics, it is true, in its negative and 
positive phases, holds out a great] hope for 
the future. But Eugenics alone will not 
suffice. The science of Eugenics must be 
coupled with the science of Social Adjust- 
ment to insure the production of a Super 
Race. The necessity of this union is well 
recognized by the students of heredity, 
while the students of Social Adjustment 
found their theories on premises essentially 
biologic in origin. One of the most widely 
known writers on heredity concludes a re- 
cent book with the statement that — " At 
present, we can only indicate that the fu- 
ture of our race depends on Eugenics (in 
some form or other), combined with the 
simultaneous evolution of eutechnics and 
eutopias. 'Brave words,' of course; but 



The Super Race 43 

surely not ' Eutopian ' ! " 12 Thus the 
knowledge and practice of the laws of 
heredity must be supplemented by a knowl- 
edge and practice of the laws of Social 
Adjustment. 

12 J. Arthur Thompson, Heredity, p. 308. N. Y., 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908. 



CHAPTER III 

SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT THE SCIENCE OF 

MOLDING INSTITUTIONS 

After a gardener has produced his seed, 
guaranteeing a good heredity by breeding 
together those individual plants which pos- 
sess in the highest degree the qualities he 
desires to secure, he turns his atten- 
tion to the seed bed. First of all, the lo- 
cation must be good — the bed must be on 
a southern slope, where it will benefit by 
the first warm rays of the spring sun ; then 
the soil must be finely pulverized, in order 
that the tiny rootlets may easily force their 
way downward, finding nourishment ready 
at hand ; when the seeds have been planted, 
in ground well prepared and fertilized, 
they must be watered, cultivated, weeded; 
and as they develop into larger plants, 
thinned, transplanted, pruned and sprayed. 
The wise gardener considers environment 
as well as heredity. By sowing choice 
44 



The Super Race 45 

seeds in well prepared soil, he ensures the 
excellence of his crop. 

Modern society may well be compared 
to a garden. The plants are living, mov- 
ing beings, with some freedom to act 
on their own initiative. Moreover, it is 
they who make and tend the gardens in 
which they grow. Like the gardener in 
the story, they must look to environment 
as well as to heredity. The seed bed 
must be carefully prepared, and the young 
plants, as they appear, must be given all 
the attention which science makes possible. 
Modern society is a garden of which the 
products are men and women. The sow- 
ing, weeding, cultivating — carried for- 
ward through social institutions — deter- 
mines by its character whether the race 
shall decay, as other races have done, or 
progress toward the Super Man. 

This science of social gardening — So- 
cial Adjustment — has been given a great 
impetus, in recent years, by the increased 
knowledge of the relative influences of 
heredity and environment in determining 
the status of the individual. This knowl- 
edge has led us to a belief in men* 



4 6 



The Super Race 



Earlier beliefs conceived of the majority 
of men as utterly depraved. Some indeed 
were among the elect, but the remainder, 
born to the lowest depths of the social 
gehenna, were outcasts and pariahs, help- 
less in this world and hopeless in the next. 
This doctrine of total depravity set at 
nought all progressive effort. Here 
stands a man — society has called him a 
criminal. Last year he attempted to steal 
an automobile, less than three weeks after 
his release from serving a two-year sen- 
tence for grand larceny. To-day he is in 
court again, charged with entering a lodg- 
ing house and stealing three pairs of 
trousers and an overcoat. The man is on 
trial for burglary- — what shall be the so- 
cial verdict regarding him? 

" Alas," mourns the advocate of total 
depravity, " God so made him. It is not 
our right to interfere." 

" Wait," says the social scientist, " until 
I investigate the case." 

The case is held over while the scientist 
makes his investigation. After careful 
inquiry, he reports that the young man's 
criminal record began at the age of nine, 



The Super Race 47 

when he was arrested for stealing bananas 
from a freight car. Locked up with older 
criminals, he soon learned their tricks. 
He was " nimble " and could " handle 
himself," so his prison mates taught him 
the science of pocket picking, and initiated 
him into the gentle art of " shop lifting." 
Hd was released, after two months of this 
schooling, and slipping out into the big, 
black city, he tried an experiment. Suc- 
ceeding, he tried again, and yet again. 
Before the month was out, he was de- 
tected stealing a silk handkerchief, and was 
back in prison. There his education was 
perfected, and he entered the world to try 
once more. From the world to jail, from 
jail to the world — this boy's life history 
from the age of nine, had been one long at- 
tempt to learn his trade ; fortunately or un- 
fortunately, he was somewhat of a bungler, 
and sooner or later he was always caught. 
When he was a boy, he sneaked up a 
dingy court, and three pairs of dirty stairs 
to a landing where, in the rear of a bat- 
tered tenement, was an abode which he 
had been taught to call home. His father, 
a dock laborer, earned, on the average, 



48 The Super Race 

about $300 a year. Sometimes he worked 
steadily, day and night, for a week, and 
earned $25 or $30; then there would be 
no work for ten days or perhaps two 
weeks; the money would run out; the gro- 
cer would refuse credit; and the family 
would be hungry. It was during one of 
these hungry intervals that the nine-year- 
old urchin made his descent on the bananas 
in the freight car, and received his first 
jail sentence. 

His mother, good hearted but woefully 
ignorant, made the best of things, taking 
id washing, doing odd jobs here and there, 
tending to her children, when opportunity 
offered, and at other times letting them 
run the streets. 

" There," concludes the social scientist, 
" is the story of that boy's life. His only 
picture of manhood is an inefficient father 
who cannot earn enough to support his 
family; his concept of a mother expresses 
itself in good hearted ignorance; his view 
of society has been secured from the rear 
of a shabby tenement, the curb of a nar- 
row street and a cell in the county jail. 
The seed bed has been neither prepared. 



The Super Race 49 

watered, nor tended, and the young shoot 
has grown wild." 

The social scientist has not been content 
with an analysis of social maladjustment; 
going further, he has transplanted the 
young shoots from the defective seed bed 
to better ground. Dr. Bernardo organ- 
ized a system for taking the boy criminals 
out of the slums of English cities, and 
sending them to farms in Australia, South 
Africa and Canada. Nearly 50,000 boys 
have been thus disposed of. Though in 
their home cities many of them had already 
entered a criminal life, in their new sur- 
roundings less than two per cent, of them 
showed any tendency to revert to their 
former criminal practices. A little tend- 
ing and transplanting into a congenial en- 
vironment, proved the salvation of these 
boys, who would otherwise have thronged 
the jails of England. 

Careful analysis has convinced the so- 
cial scientist that, in the absence of mal- 
formation of the brain, or of some other 
physical defect, the average man is largely 
made by his environment. As serious 
physical defect is quite rare, being present 



50 The Super Race 

in less than five per cent, of the popula- 
tion; and as only a small percentage of the 
population, perhaps two or three! per cent., 
is above the average in ability, more than 
nine-tenths of the people remain average 

— shaped by their environment; capable 
of good or of evil, according as the good 
or evil forces of society influence their 
youth arid early maturity. 

The eighteenth century philosophers 
had embodied the same conclusion in the 
doctrine that all men are created free and 
equal. Victor Hugo, in the first half of 
the nineteenth century, based most of his 
inspiring novels on the theory that in every 
man there is a divine spark — a conscience 

— which will be developed by a good en- 
vironment or crushed and blackened by a 
bad one. 

Each year addled new proofs of the 
theory of universal capacity, until Ward 
was able to write his Applied Sociology, 
demonstrating that opportunity is the key- 
note of social progress. 1 For, says he, 
up to the present time nine-tenths of the 

1 Lester F. Ward, Applied Sociology, pp. 224-281. 
Boston, Ginn & Co., 1906. 



The Super Race 51 

men, and ten-tenths of the women (nine- 
teen twentieths of society) have been de- 
nied a legitimate opportunity for develop- 
tment. Grant this opportunity, and at 
once, without any change in hereditary 
characteristics, you can increase, nineteen 
fold, the achievements of society. 

Ward's estimate may be or may not be 
exactly correct. His contention that uni- 
versalized opportunity would greatly aug- 
ment social achievement is, however, fun- 
damentally sound. Social Adjustment 
aims, through the shaping social institu- 
tions, to provide every individual with an 
opportunity to secure a strong body, a 
trained mind, an aggressive attitude, the 
power of concentration, and the vision of 
a goal toward which he is working. 2 In 
short, the object of Social Adjustment is 
the provision of universal opportunity. 

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean 
bear many a gem of purest ray serene. 
Even the most gifted individual, thrown 
into an adverse environment, will either 

2 For a more complete statement of the problem, see 
Social Adjustment, Scott Nearing, New York: Macmil- 
lan Company, 1911. 



52 The Super Race 

fail utterly to develop his powers, or else 
will develop them so incompletely that 
they can never come to their full fruition. 
Thomas A. Edison cast away on an island 
in the South Pacific would be useless to his 
fellows. Abraham Lincoln, living among 
the Apache Indians, would have left small 
impress on the world. A sculptor, to be 
really great, must go to Rome, because it 
is in Rome that the great works of sculp- 
tured art are to be found. It is in Rome, 
furthermore, that the great sculptors work 
and teach. A lawyer can scarcely achieve 
distinction while practicing in a backwoods 
county court, nor can a surgeon remain 
proficient in his science unless he keep in 
constant touch with the world of surgery. 
" I must go to the city," cried a woman 
with an unusual voice. " Here in the 
country I can sing, but I cannot study mu- 
sic." She must, of necessity, go to the 
city because in the city alone exists the 
stimulus and the example which are neces- 
sary for the perfection of her art. 

A congenial environment is necessary 
for* the perfection of any hereditary talent. 
Lester F. Ward concludes, after an ex- 



The Super Race 53 

haustive analysis of self-made men, that 
such men are the exception. That they 
exist he must admit, but that their abilities 
would have come to a much more complete 
development in a congenial environment 
he clearly demonstrates. 

The rigorous persecution of the Middle 
Ages eliminated any save the most daring 
thinkers. Men of science, who presumed 
to assert facts in contradiction of the ac- 
cepted dogmas of the Church, were ruth- 
lessly silenced, hence the ages were very 
dark. The nineteenth century, on the 
contrary, through its cultivation of science 
and scientific attainments, has reaped a 
harvest of scientific achievement unparal- 
leled in the history of the world. Men 
to-day enter; scientific pursuits for the same 
reason that they formerly entered the mili- 
tary service — because every emphasis is 
laid on scientific endeavor. The nine- 
teenth century scientist is the logical out- 
come of the nineteenth century desires for 
scientific progress. 

The environment shapes the man. Yet, 
equally, does the man shape the environ- 
ment. A high standard individual may 



r 54 'The Super Race 

be handicapped by social tradition, but, in 
like manner, progressive social institutions 
are inconceivable in the absence of high 
standard men and women. 

The institutions of a society — its 
homes, schools, government, industry — ■ 
are created by the past and shaped by the 
present. Institutions are not subjected to 
sudden changes, yet one generation, ani- 
mated by the effort to realize a high ideal, 
may reshape the social structure. Can 
one conceive of a paper strewn campus 
in a college where the spirit is strong? 
Parisians believe in beauty, hence Paris is 
beautiful. Social institutions combine 
the achievements of the past with the 
ethics of the present. 

" Let me see where you live and I will 
tell you what you are," is a true saying. 
The social environment, moldable in each 
generation, is an accurate index to the 
ideals and aspirations of the generation in 
which it exists. 



CHAPTER IV 

EDUCATION THE SCIENCE OF INDIVID- 
UAL DEVELOPMENT 

EUGENICS provides the hereditary quali- 
ties of the Super Man; Social Adjustment 
furnishes the environment in which these 
qualities are to develop; there still remains 
the development of the individual through 
Education, a word which means, for our 
purposes, all phases of character shaping 
from birth-day to death-day. 

The individual has been rediscovered 
during the past three centuries. He was 
known in some of the earlier civilizations, 
but during the Middle Ages the place that 
had seen him knew him no more. He was 
submerged in the group and forced to sub- 
ordinate his interests to the demands of 
group welfare. The distinctive work of 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has 
been a reversal of this enforced individual 
oblivion and the formulation of a demand 
55 



56 The Super Race 

for individual initiative and activity. The 
individual, pushed forward in politics, in 
religion, and in commerce has freely as- 
serted and successfully maintained his right 
to consideration, until the opportunities of 
the twentieth century free citizen far ex- 
ceed those of the convention-bound citizen 
of the middle ages. The twentieth cen- 
tury citizen is free because he makes ef- 
ficient choices. The continuance of his 
freedom depends upon the continued wis- 
dom of his choice. 

The chief objective point of modern en- 
deavor has been individual freedom of 
choice. The laissez-faire doctrine in com- 
mercial relations, democracy in politics, 
the natural philosophy and natural theol- 
ogy of the eighteenth century are all ex- 
pressions of a belief in equality. When 
men are made free to choose, they are 
placed on a basis of equality, since they 
have a like opportunity to succeed or fail. 
The man who chooses rightly wins suc- 
cess — the man who chooses wrongly fails. 

Thus the freedom to choose is for the 
average man a right of inestimable value, 
because it places in his hands the opgor- 



The Super Race 57 

tunity to achieve. Rights do not, how- 
ever, come alone. The freeman is bound 
in his choices to recognize the law that 
rights are always accompanied by duties. 

Each right is accompanied by a propor- 
tionate responsibility — there is no dinner 
without its dishwashing. To be sure, you 
may shift the burden of dishwashing to the 
maid, and the burden of voting to the 
" other fellow," but the responsibility is 
none the less present. Garbage is still 
garbage, even when thrown into the well, 
and your responsibilities, shifted to the 
maid and the other voter, return to plague 
you in the form of a servant problem and 
of vicious politics. Men who have a right 
to choose have also a duty to fulfill, and 
this right and this duty are inseparable. 

The eighteenth century began the dis- 
covery of the individual man; the nine- 
teenth century — at least the latter half of 
it — was responsible for the discovery of 
the individual woman. Even to-day in 
many civilized lands, the woman is merely 
an appendage. Men innumerable write in 
the hotel register " John Edwards and 
Wife," yet if the *truth were told they 



58 The Super Race 

should often write " Jane Edwards and 
John Edwards," and perhaps sometimes 
" Jane Edwards and husband." 

Western civilization, a good unthinking 
creature, has insisted bravely on the devel- 
opment of the individual man, while largely 
overlooking the existence of the individual 
woman; yet the studies of heredity show 
very clearly that at least as many qualities 
are inherited from the female as from the 
male. Nay, further, since the female is 
less specialized, the distinctive race quali- 
ties are inherited from her, rather than 
from the more specialized male. In short, 
the Super Man will have a mother as well 
as a father. 

The fact that the average man has as 
many female as he had male ancestors is 
very frequently overlooked. ,Yet it is a 
fact that inevitably carries with it the im- 
putation, that if his ancestors were thus 
equally apportioned, he must have inher- 
ited his qualities from both sexes. There- 
fore, in the production of the Super Man, 
the qualities of the woman are of equal 
importance with the qualities of the man. 

The individual is the goal and Educa- 



The Super Race 59 

tion the means, since Education is 
the science of individual development. 
Through Education, we shall enable the 
individual to live completely. But what 
is complete life? How shall we compass 
or define it? 

Two laws are laid down as fundamental 
in nature — the laws of self preservation 
and of self perpetuation. With the devel- 
opment of society, and social relations, the 
individual must recognize himself, not as 
an individual only, but likewise as a unit 
in a social group. Hence, for him, self 
preservation and self perpetuation neces- 
sarily involve group preservation and 
group perpetuation. His code of life 
imust therefore formulate itself in this 
wise — 

THE OBJECTS OF 
ENDEAVOR 

Immediate Ultimate 



Individual Self Expression Super Man 

Eugenics 
Social . Social Adjustment Super Race 
Education 

The individual, for self preservation, 



60 The Super Race 

demands: self expression; for self perpetua- 
tion he demands that the standard of his 
children be higher than his own. As a 
member of the social group, he looks to 
Eugenics, Social Adjustment, and Educa- 
tion as the immediate means of raising 
social standards, and the ultimate means 
of providing a Super Race. 

Such are the abstract ideals — how may 
they be practically applied? How shall 
the individual express, through Eugenics, 
Social Adjustment, and Education his de- 
sire for the development of a Super Race? 

Do you, sir, enjoy living in the neigh- 
borhood of vandals and thieves? Well, 
hardly. One could not be expected to take 
so frivolous a view of life, therefore you 
will in self defense take every possible pre- 
caution to suppress vandalism and thiev- 
ery? Never, my dear sir, never! You 
must take every possible precaution to re- 
duce the spirit of vandalism and of thiev- 
ery. The acts are in themselves unconse- 
quential — they are but the product of a 
diseased mind or an indifferent training. 
The spirit, here as elsewhere, is all im- 
portant. 



The Super Race 61 

Are you a scientist? Do you admire 
Pasteur and Herbert Spencer? You are 
a " practical " man — see what Edison has 
done for you. As a statesman, you revere 
Lincoln and Daniel Webster. You can- 
not, as an artist, overlook the portraits of 
Rembrandt or the water scenes of Ruys- 
dael. You must agree with me that these 
and a thousand others that I might men- 
tion — men called geniuses by their con- 
temporaries or their descendants — have 
contributed untold worth to the society of 
which they were a part. They chose 
rightly. They are looked upon, and justly, 
as the salt of the earth. You admit the 
value of geniuses, in civilization, and you 
would, of course, do anything to increase 
their number? Then, let me say to you 
that the first thing for you to decide is 
that your own children shall be neither 
vandals nor thieves. The second thing 
for you to decide is that they shall, in so 
far as you are able to determine the mat- 
ter, possess all of your good qualities, 
coupled with the good qualities which you 
lack, supplied by an able mate. In short, 
you must choose your life partner with a 



62 The Super Race 

view to the elimination of anti-social tend- 
encies, on the one hand, and on the other 
to the development of the qualities which 
distinguish the Super Man. 

How obvious is this statement, yet how 
haphazard has been the production of 
greatness. Only once in a generation does 
a man, in his choice of a wife, follow the 
example of John Newcomb. In a truly 
scientific spirit he enumerated on paper the 
qualities which he possessed; placed oppo- 
site them the qualities in which he was 
lacking ; and then set out to find the woman 
who should supply his deficiencies. When 
he had located his future helpmeet, playing 
hymn tunes on an organ in a little red 
school house, and upon further acquaint- 
ance, had assured himself that she really 
possessed the needed qualities, he married 
her, with the determination that their first 
child should be a great mathematician. 
Their first child was Simon Newcomb, one 
of the leading astronomers of the nine- 
teenth century. 

John Newcomb was a village school mas- 
ter, and his wife a village maiden, but in 
their choice they combined two sets O'f 



The Super Race 63 

qualities which would inevitably produce 
a Super Man. John Newcomb was a pi- 
oneer eugenist. He chose a mate with the 
thought of the future foremost in his mind. 

Too often, however, the men of parts 
follow the example of the brilliant pro- 
fessor who married a " social butterfly." 
11 Why in the world did you do it? " asked 
an old friend. " Oh, well," answered the 
professor, " I felt that I had brains enough 
for both." 

True, professor, but according to the 
Mendelian law of heredity, those brains 
of yours will be halved in each of your chil- 
dren, and quartered in each of your grand- 
children. Why should not the future be 
at least as brilliant as your own genera- 
tion? 

Human marriage is ordinarily a hit or 
miss affair. Men and women, inspired by 
the loftiest motives, and animated in most 
matters by supreme good sense, not infre- 
quently grope blindly toward matrimony; 
often marry uncongenially; and finally 
bring disgrace upon their own heads, and 
misery upon their families. Stevenson, 
with such marriages in mind, writes 



64 The Super Race 

to the average prospective bridegroom — 
" What! you have had one life to man- 
age, and have failed so strangely, and now 
can see nothing wiser than to conjoin with 
it the management of some one else's? Be- 
cause you have been unfaithful in a very 
little, you propose yourself to be a ruler 
over ten cities. You are no longer content 
to be your own enemy; you must be your 
wife's also. God made you, but you marry 
yourself; no one is responsible but you. 
You have eternally missed your way in life, 
with consequences that you still deplore, 
and yet you masterfully seize your wife's 
hand, and blindfold, drag her after you to 
ruin. And it is your wife, you observe, 
whom you select. She, whose happiness 
you most desire, you choose to be your vic- 
tim. You would earnestly warn her from 
a tottering bridge or bad investment. If 
she were to marry some one else, how you 
would tremble for her fate ! If she were 
only your sister and you thought half as 
much of her, how doubtfully would you en- 
trust her future to a man no better than 
yourself! " * 
1 Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginihis Puerisque. 



The Super Race 65 

Here, then, lies the path of eugenic ac- 
tivity for the individual — clear, straight, 
unmistakable. In the first place, he must 
never transmit to the future any defect. 
If he has a transmissible defect, he must 
have no offspring. This seems but reason- 
able — an obligation to bring no unneces- 
sary misery into a world where so much 
already exists. But the individual — free 
to choose — must go one step further, and 
in his selection, must seek a mate with the 
qualities which are complementary to his 
own. 

Looked at from the standpoint of soci- 
ety, there is no single choice which com- 
pares in importance to the choice of a mate ; 
for on that choice depend the qualities 
which this generation will transmit to the 
next, and from which the next generation 
must create its follower. Furthermore, 
there is no choice which, in modern society, 
is more completely individual — more 
freed from* social interference, than the 
choice of a life mate. The man in choos- 
ing his life partner, chooses the future. 
Civilization hangs expectant on his de- 
cision. The Super Race, dim and indis- 



66 The Super Race 

tinct, may be made a living reality by a 
eugenic choice in the present — a choice 
for which each man and woman who mar- 
ries is in part responsible. With the ad- 
vance of woman's emancipation, with the 
increasing range of her activity, comes an 
ever increasing opportunity to exercise 
such a choice. She, as well as the man, 
may now assist in the determination of 
the future. She as well as the man may 
now be held accountable for the non-ap- 
pearance of the Super Race. 

Does the burden of Eugenic Choice 
rest heavily upon the shoulders of the in- 
dividual? Does he hesitate to assume 
the responsibility of the future race ? The 
burden of shaping Social Adjustments is 
no less onerous. 

Briefly, then, what changes may the in- 
dividual make in institutions to develop 
the qualities of the Super Man? The 
social institutions with which the aver- 
age man comes into the most intimate con- 
tact are : 

i. The Home. 

2. The School. 

3. The Government 



The Super Race 67 

The home as an institution must provide 
for the Super Man enough food, clothing 
and shelter to guarantee him a good phy- 
sique; enough training in cooperation and 
mutual helpfulness to give him the vision 
of a Super Race; and a supply of enthusi- 
asm sufficient to enable him to work with 
increasing energy for the fulfillment of 
those things in which he believes. In order 
that the home may supply these things, 
it must have an income sufficient to provide 
all of the necessaries and some of the com- 
forts of life. It must further be domi- 
nated by a spirit of sympathetic democ- 
racy. 

While the present system of wealth dis- 
tribution is so grotesquely unscientific that 
men are forced to rear families on incomes 
that will not provide the necessaries, to say 
nothing of the comforts, of life, no true 
home can be established nor can a Super 
Race be produced. If the child is an asset 
to the state, the state should support the 
child, guaranteeing to it an income suf- 
ficient to provide for its material welfare. 

Why prate of home virtue? Why dis- 
course learnedly on the possibilities of a de- 



68 The Super Race 

veloped manhood to a father earning nine 
dollars a week? If you can guarantee 
such a man an income of three dollars a 
week for each child, in addition to the nine 
dollars for his wife and himself, you may 
well air your views regarding a Super Race ; 
but until your lowest income is high enough 
to guarantee the necessaries of life to a 
family of five; or until the state guarantees 
am income to each child in its early life, 
" You may as well go stand upon the beach 
and bid the main flood bate his usual 
height," as to demand that a man, working 
for starvation wages, provide a home in 
which Super Men can be reared. 

When income has been provided; when 
there is food for every mouth, warm cloth- 
ing for every back, enough fuel for winter, 
and a few pennies each week for recrea- 
tion, then indeed you may begin to speak in 
terms of social improvement. Then, and 
then only, you may tell the father and the 
mother that upon their efforts during the 
first seven years of their children's lives 
depends the attitude which those children 
will assume when they go out into the 
world; that the home in which tyranny is 



The Super Race 69 

unknown, in which the family rules the 
family, will produce the noblest citizensi 
for the noblest state ; that the home is still 
the most fundamental institution in civiliza- 
tion, the conservator of our ideals, and 
visions of the better things that are to come 
in the future — these things you may say, 
emphasizing the fact, that without a well 
rounded home-training in youth, even the 
noblest talents cannot come to their full 
fruition. 

The school is a specialized form of 
home. In early days, when life was sim- 
ple, arid specialization was unknown, edu- 
cation was given almost wholly in the 
home; but with the growth of specialized 
tasks, the home could no longer fulfill its 
function as educator and the school was 
introduced. Education, whether given in 
the home or in the school, has as its ob- 
ject a complete life. The purpose of edu- 
cation is to enable the pupil to live com- 
pletely — to be a rounded being, in what- 
ever station; he may be called upon to fill. 

Would you mold the school to fit the 
needs of the children? Then, the system 
of education must be so shaped that chil- 



70 The Super Race 

dren are prepared to live their lives com- 
pletely. They must understand them- 
selves. " Know thyself " is a command 
worthy of their attention. The child's 
body, in the period of change from child- 
hood to adulthood, is an organism of the 
imost delicate nature, barely reaching ad- 
justment under the most auspicious condi- 
tions, and more than frequently failing 
signally from a lack of knowledge, or from 
the absence of sympathetic understanding. 
The child — the father of the man — 
must be taught to appreciate the human 
machine of which he is given charge. It is 
in the school, with its corps of specialists, 
that this work can be most effectively done. 
Then, one by one, the school may take 
up and foster the qualities of the Super 
Man. Physique must come first. It is 
blatant mockery to speak of educating 
minds that dwell in anaemic bodies. 
Every boy and girl has a right to a strong, 
well knit frame, and the school must teach 
the best methods of securing it. Mental 
grasp — the power to see and judge a situ- 
ation or combination of facts, may also 
come through the school. In fact, the 



The Super Race 71 

school course, as at present organized, 
aims to secure that and little else. As the 
science of education advances, the same 
material which now comprises the entire 
course will be taught in less time and in 
wiser ways, so that the child shall be free 
to learn some of those other things so im- 
portant to his soul's welfare. Aggressive- 
ness and concentration are methods rather 
than ends, and can be made a part of every 
game, every competition, and every study, 
so that the child absorbs them as he ab- 
sorbs the atmosphere, without knowing 
that they become a part of his being. 
Whether the school can instill sympathy 
and inspire vision is a question that the 
future alone must decide. Both may be 
given by individual teachers, and both may 
be possible to the school, though, if the 
home is doing its work, these things will 
come more effectively there than through 
the school. Most or all of the essential 
qualities of the Super Man can and will 
come through a well organized arid prop- 
erly directed educational system. 

The government — providing the ma- 
chinery of state administration, furnishing 



72 The Super Race 

the school, the playground, and the library; 
affording an opportunity for the exercise of 
citizenship and the expression of those ad- 
vancing ideas which must gradually re- 
imold the social institutions of each age in 
response to the demands of the new genera- 
tion • — affords one of the most potent 
forces for the development of the Super 
Man. 

The school is the big home ; the govern- 
ment is the big school. The child leaves 
the home, and enters! the school; leaves the 
school and enters the state. In the home 
he! is acted upon ; in the school he, himself, 
begins to act; but in the government he is 
the sole actor — he is the state. A home 
must be higher than the children ; the school 
must be more advanced than the pupils; 
but the state reflects exactly the character 
of its citizens. It is in the state that the 
Super Man, crystallizing his convictions 
and beliefs into the form of legislative 
enactments, must prepare the way for the 
Super Race. 

The Super Race is the produce of hered- 
ity, of social environment, and of individ- 
ual development. Heredity supplies the 



The Super Race 73 

raw material — the individual human be- 
ing, while education and social environ- 
ment, operating upon this raw stuff, de- 
termine the course of its development. 
Steel is not made from bee's wax, nor is 
the Super Man created out of a defective 
heredity. In like manner, since those 
who are in Rome do as the Romans do, 
the raw material, no matter what its qual- 
ity, is shaped by its surroundings. The 
old saying " as the twig is bent, the tree's 
inclined," should be modified in this one 
particular — the force which bends the 
twig must continue in the tree, else the 
latter will turn and grow toward the sky. 

The stock of the Super Man will be se- 
cured by the mating of persons possessing 
the Super-Race qualities; yet, reared in an 
unfavorable environment, these qualities 
cannot produce the highest result. 

Neither biologic nor social forces are 
alone adequate to develop the Super Race. 
Physique, mental capacity, aggressiveness, 
concentration, sympathy and vision are the 
products of heredity, social environment 
and training. The system of human 
mating must be perfected and the status of 



74 The Super Race 

social institutions must be raised in order 
that the individuals produced in each gen- 
eration may attain an additional increment 
of the qualities which will, in the end, pro- 
duce the Super Race. 



CHAPTER V 

THE AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY 

Here, in brief compass, are laid down the 
general principles upon which a nation must 
rely for the raising of its standard of hu- 
man excellence. In general, we are con- 
vinced that the Super Race is possible. 
Specifically — and here is the next point 
— there are more possibilities for the de- 
velopment of the Super Race in the United 
States to-day than there have been in any 
nation of the past; or than there are in any 
Ration of the present. The Super Race 
is America's distinctive opportunity. 

The factors which may play so signifi- 
cant a part in establishing a Super Race in 
the United States are here set down in an 
order which permits of sequential treat- 
ment — 

i. Natural resources. 

2. The stock of the dominant races. 

3. Leisure. 

75 



76 



The Super Race 



4. The emancipation of women. 

5. The abandonment of war. 

6. A knowledge of race making. 

7. A knowledge of Social Adjust- 

ment. 

8. A widespread educational ma- 

chinery. 

Natural resources are an indispensable 
element in] national progress. A congenial 
climate is a pre-requisite to social develop- 
ment. No permanently successful civili- 
zation can be erected on the shores of Hud- 
son Bay, or in the torrid heat of the Ama- 
zon Valley. The temperate zones, with 
their variable climate, and their wide 
range of vegetable products, seem to pro- 
vide the foundation for the successful civ- 
ilizations of the immediate future. No 
less necessary to civilization are harbors 
for the maintenance of commerce; and an 
abundance of minerals, the sinews of indus- 
try; and most important of all, fertile ag- 
ricultural land. 

In its possession of these natural re- 
sources, the United States is unexcelled. 
Its climate, while generally temperate, 
varies sufficiently to give an excellent range 



The Super Race 77 

of products; harbors and rivers are abun- 
dant; forests and minerals are scattered 
everywhere; and the agricultural land, 
rich and well watered, is as extensive and 
as potentially productive as any equivalent 
area in the world. So far as natural re- 
sources provide a basis for a Super Race, 
the United States occupies a position of 
almost unique prominence. 

The stock of the dominant races may or 
may not be a cant phrase. Notwithstand- 
ing the effective work done by Ripley in his 
Races of Europe, 1 an impression still 
prevails that certain races are, from their 
racial characteristics, specially fitted to 
dominate others. Woodruff, in his Ex- 
pansion of Races, 2, takes this view, strongly 
urging the claim of the northwest- 
ern European to the distinction of 
world ruler. Whether race be a matter of 
supreme or of little concern, in determin- 
ing the development of a Super Race, the 
United States possesses an admirable 



!Wm. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, N. Y., D. Ap- 
pleton & Co., 1899. 

2 C. E. Woodruff, The Expansion of Races. N. Y., 
Rebman, 1909. 



78 The Super Race 

blending of the western European peoples 
who now occupy the dominant position in 
the commercial and military affairs of the 
world. If racial stock be a matter of no 
importance, it requires no emphasis; if, on 
the other hand, it be a significant factor in 
the creation of the Super Race, then the 
United States holds an enviable position 
in its racial qualities. 

Thus the raw materials of nation build- 
ing — the natural resources and the racial 
qualities, are possessed by the United 
States in generous abundance. Has our 
use of them tended toward the develop- 
ment of the Super Race? 

Leisure is an opportunity for the pursuit 
of a congenial avocation. It; must be care- 
fully differentiated from the idleness with 
which it is so often considered synonymous. 
Satan still finds mischief for idle hands. 
The man who idles in leisure time is as 
likely now as ever in the past to find him- 
self breaking several of the command- 
ments. Leisure merely provides an oppor- 
tunity for free choice. Unwisely used, it 
leads to individual dissipation and social 
degeneracy. Wisely employed, it is a 



The Super Race 79 

mast important means for the promotion 
of social progress. 

Most of the great things of the world 
have been done in leisure time. A poet 
cannot create, nor can a mechanic devise, if 
he is forced during twelve hours each day 
to struggle for the bare necessities of life. 
A study of the lives of those who have 
made notable achievements in art, science, 
literature, and diplomacy shows that they 
were free, for the most part, from the 
bread and butter struggle. They had es- 
tates, they were the recipients of pensions, 
but they did not submit to the soul- 
destroying monotony of repeating the same 
task endlessly through the long reaches of 
a twelve hour day. 

Primitive society demands the service 
of even its immature members. Children 
are adults before their childhood is well 
begun. Civilization, recognizing the pos- 
sibility of self preservation through length- 
ened youth, has said to the child li Play." 

Long youth means long life. Play time 
— leisure — for the youth is the bone and 
sinew of a high standard maturity. Lei- 
sure in youth for play, leisure in mature 



80 The Super Race 

life for reflection and creation — these are 
two of the most precious gifts of civiliza- 
tion to social progress. 

The United States has led the nations 
in providing opportunity for leisure time. 
Labor saving devices have been brought 
to a higher perfection there than in any 
other part of the world. Nowhere are 
children kept longer from assuming the re- 
sponsibilities of adult; life; in few countries 
is the workday shorter for adults. 

Probably no other people in the world 
can supply themselves with the necessaries 
of life in so short a working time as can 
the inhabitants of the United States. If 
every able bodied adult engaged for five 
hours each day in gainful activity, enough 
economic goods could be created to provide 
all the necessaries and many of the com- 
forts of life. The leisure obtained 
through American industry, if rightly di- 
rected, may provide for every child born a 
thorough education — an ample opportu- 
nity to express the qualities which are la- 
tent in him — and a thorough preparation 
for life. 

The emancipation of women is another 



The Super Race 81 

force which may be directed toward the 
improvement of race qualities. Women 
bear the race in their bodies; at least half 
of the qualities of the offspring are inher- 
ited from them; as mothers, they educate 
the children during the first six years of 
their lives, and then, as school teachers 
and mothers they play the leading part in 
education until the children reach the age 
of twelve or fourteen. The youth of the 
race is in women's keeping. They shape 
the child clay. The twig is bent, the tree 
is inclined by women's hands. 

The emancipation of woman means her 
individualization. Both in primitive cus- 
tom and in early law her individuality is 
merged in that of the man. " Wives," 
wrote Paul, " be obedient unto your hus- 
bands, for this is the law." Mohammedan 
women wear veils that they may not be 
seen; Chinese women bind their feet that 
they may not escape; the women of conti- 
nental Europe spend their lives in minister- 
ing to the comfort of their liege lords. 
They are dependent — almost abject. 
From such a sowing, what must be the 
reaping? Into the hands of these subject 



82 The Super Race 

creatures, men have committed the train- 
ing of their sons. 

Can a corrupt tree bring forth good 
fruit? If women are inferior to men, can 
they be worthy to train their future su- 
periors — their sons? If they are of a 
lower mentality than men, how is it that, 
in the school as well as in the home, men 
have given into their hands the power to 
shape the destinies of the race? 

Would you have your sons trained by a 
free man or by a slave? Do noble civic 
ideals flow from a citizen of a free com- 
monwealth, or from the subjects of a des- 
pot? Only the woman who is a human 
being, with power and freedom to choose, 
may teach the son of a free man. Eman- 
cipation has given to women the power of 
choice. 

The women of America have been par- 
tially emancipated. In some states, they 
may vote, sue for divorce, collect their 
own wages, hold property, and transact 
business. Everywhere they are filling the 
high schools and colleges; participating in 
industry and entering the professions. 
American women are independent beings 



The Super Race 83 

— distinctive units in a great organic so- 
ciety. 

In so far as the qualities of the Super 
Man are developed and perfected by the 
teachings of women, they will be more 
effectually rounded by the emancipated 
woman than by the serf. The mothers of 
America are prepared to teach their sons 
and daughters because they have been 
taught to think the noblest thoughts and 
do the strongest things. 

The abandonment of war removes one 
of the most destructive forces of the past, 
because war has always tended to eliminate 
the best of every race. In the flower of 
their manhood, the noblest died on the field 
of battle — their lives uncompleted; their 
tasks unfinished — leaving, perhaps, no 
offspring to bear their qualities in the suc- 
ceeding generation. Although the law of 
nature is the survival of the fittest, " In the 
red field of human history the natural proc- 
ess of selection is often reversed." 3 The 
best perish in war, leaving the less fit to 
carry forward the affairs of state, and to 

3 D, S. Jordan, The Human Harvest, p. 54. Boston, 
American Unitarian Association, 1907. 



84 The Super Race 

propagate. " The man who is left holds 
in his grasp the history of the future," 4 
and if, as is frequently the case, he is the 
one least fitted to survive, the race is con- 
stantly breeding from the unfit rather than 
from the fit. Where the human harvest 
is bad, the nation must perish. So long as 
war persisted, so long as th^ best left their 
bones on the battle field, while the worst 
left their descendants to man the state, a 
bad human harvest was inevitable. War 
ate into the heart of national vitality by 
destroying the nation's best blood. 

War, however, has practically ceased. 
The movement for peace, in which the 
United States, both by precept and prac- 
tice, is a leader, stands as one of the signal 
achievements of the new icentury. The 
abandonment of war has laid a basis for 
the Super Race by permitting the most fit 
to live and to hand on their special quali- 
ties to coming generations. 

In the United States, as elsewhere in the 
civilized world, the science of race making 
has recently undergone great development. 
While the movement began in England, it 

4 Ibid, p. 48. 



The Super Race 85 

has spread rapidly, until at the present 
time its significance is universally recog- 
nized by scientists. The principles of ar- 
tificial selection have been applied in the 
creation of vegetable and animal prodigies ; 
the knowledge of biologic and selective 
principles is wide-spread; and the educated 
men and women of the United States gen- 
erally understand the potency of these 
forces. 

Important steps have already been taken 
to prevent the propagation of the unfit. 
Born criminals are in some states de- 
prived of the power of reproduction; in 
most of the states, the marriage of dis- 
eased persons is prohibited; here and there 
attempts have been made to prohibit the 
marriage of any suffering from a trans- 
missible defect. On the other hand, men- 
tally defective persons are being segregated 
in institutions — guarded against the dan- 
gers which beset the men and particularly 
the women of weak mind. During the 
past two decades great strides have been 
made in educating the American public to 
a higher standard of health and efficiency. 
Though the science of race making, as such, 



86 The Super Race 

has not been given a prominent place in 
public discussion, the principles on which 
race making is based have formed an im- 
portant element in public education. The 
desire to make a Super Race in America 
is as yet in its infancy, but the ground has 
been thdXMghly prepared, and a founda- 
tier. laid upon which such a super-structure 
of desire for race making can be speedily 
and effectively erected. 

Meanwhile, the science of Social Adjust- 
ment has occupied the most prominent 
place in American thought. If the Amer- 
ican people have under-emphasized Euge- 
nics they have over-emphasized Social Ad- 
justment. From ocean to ocean, the coun- 
try has been swept, during the past three 
decades, by a whirlwind of legislation di- 
rected toward the adjustment of social in- 
stitutions to human needs. Trusts, fac- 
tories, food, railroads, liquor selling and 
a hundred other subjects have been kept 
in the foreground of public attention. 
The American people might almost plead 
guilty to adjustment madness. 

From the foundation of the earliest col- 
onies, the basis, in theory at least, was laid 



The Super Race 87 

for the development of the individual. 
The colonists believed in the worth-while- 
ness of men, they lived in an age of natural 
philosophy; they were the products of an 
effort to secure religious and political free- 
dom; they therefore emphasized the indi- 
vidual conscience, and the right of the in- 
dividual to think and act for himself. 
Each individual was a man, to be so re- 
garded, and so honored. Their new life 
was a hard one. Nature presented an as- 
pect on the rocky, untilled New England 
coast different from that in the civilized 
countries of the old world. There was 
but one way to meet these new conditions 
— the individual must carve out his own 
future. 

Throughout the United States, the 
watchword of the people has been oppor- 
tunity. Without opportunity, the people 
perish — hence opportunity must stand 
waiting for each succeeding generation. 
In the turmoil of commercial life, in the 
ebb arid flow of the immigrant' tide, the re- 
ality has been frequently lost; yet the ideal 
of opportunity remains as firmly rooted as 
ever. 



88 Whe Super Race 

The worth-whileness of men, the social 
control of the environment, and a free op- 
portunity for the development of the indi- 
vidual constitute the basis for social ad- 
vance in the United States. The ideal is 
firmly rooted; the possibility of its realiza- 
tion is an everpresent reality. 

With a boundless wealth of natural re- 
sources; bulwarked by the stock of the 
dominant races; with abundant leisure; 
granting freedom and individuality to 
women; foregoing war; cognizant of the 
principles of race making; Social Adjust- 
ment and of Education, the American na- 
tion is thrown into the foreground, as the 
land for the development of the Super 
Race. The American people have within 
their grasp the torch of social progress. 
Can they carry it in the van, lighting the 
dark caverns of the future? Can they de- 
velop a race of men who shall set a stan- 
dard for the world — men of physical and 
mental power, efficient, broadly sympa- 
thetic, actuated by the highest ideals, striv- 
ing toward a vison of human nobleness? 

The answer rests with this and the suc- 
ceeding generations. Given ten talents of 



The Super Race 89 

opportunity, are we as a nation worthy to 
be made the rulers over ten cities? Pro- 
vided with the raw stuff of a Super Race, 
can we mold it into " A mightier race than 
any that has been?" The past worked 
with things: the present works with men. 
11 We stand at the verge of a state of cul- 
ture, which will bel that of the depths, not, 
as heretofore, of the surface alone; a stage 
which will not be merely a culture through 
mankind, but a culture of mankind. For 
the first time the great fashioners of cul- 
ture will be able to work in marble instead 
of, as heretofore, being forced to work in 
snow." 5 Bulwarked by this pregnant 
thought, and assured by Ruskin that, 
" There is as yet no ascertained limit to 
the noblesse of person and mind which the 
human creature may attain," we press for- 
ward confidently, advocating and practic- 
ing those measures which will create the 
energy, mental grasp, efficiency, sympathy 
and vision of the Super Man and the Super 
Race. 

5 Ellen Key, Love and Marriage, p. 53. N. Y., Put- 
nam, 1911. 



Ml 20 1912 






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